Early on in this irresistible novel, Jim, its main
character, informs the narrator that: "The greatest thrill for a gambler.
. . is losing a fortune and bottoming out." Bottoming out may be a strange
way to get your kicks, definitely not everyone's idea of a good time, but Jim,
over the course of his long life — we wave goodbye to him when he's eighty —
makes a habit of it, nose-diving repeatedly, touching bottom and resurfacing.
For him: "Having nothing, starting again, unhampered, is so much sweeter
than standing pat and being mediocre."

There's no danger of Jim standing pat or being mediocre. He
wouldn't know how, in his trajectory from impoverished boyhood on a farm in
Canada, where he kept his family from hunger by learning the language of cows
in order to track them and bring them home, to his career in the Brazilian
Amazon, where he amasses a fortune, neither his first nor his last, heading up
a gold rush.

Saw the Israeli documentary, The Gatekeepers, finally. Had
put off doing so because I thought I knew what to expect. But the movie was
better, richer, than expected.

My views have long since been that Israel's occupation of
the West Bank is not just bad for the occupied but also for the occupiers. How
nice, but how facile, for me, in the United States, to hold to such a fine and
principled conclusion. It's another thing entirely when four pillars of the
Israeli defense establishment, four ex-chiefs of the Shin Bet, Israel's major
security organization, affirm the same thing, as they do, in this film.